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Have you ever said, “It’s not about the numbers” or “We don’t want just numbers”? I have. But not anymore. I have decided it is about the numbers. A pastor’s tongue-in-cheek parody helped me see the point. Pastor Tim Stevens tells about going on vacation when his three children were quite young. The entire family was standing in a crowded hotel lobby in a big city when, to his surprise, he saw one of their children, a three-year old, in an elevator going skyward, her nose pressed to the glass with fright on her face. “What am I to do?” the pastor thought. “Nothing,” was his reply. After all, two out of the three children were still there. And, after all, there were many things he and his wife had not yet done with the remaining two children. Maybe they should focus more on having a deeper relationship with the two remaining children. In fact, this pastor had never really been a numbers person. He was not the kind of pastor who, if he came to the end of a vacation with fewer children than at the beginning of the vacation, would feel guilty about the negative numbers. “I’m just not into the numbers game,” the pastor insisted. |
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Knowing how we are doing as quickly and accurately as possible is always a key leadership task. All agree that worship attendance is one primary indicator of congregational vitality. Many other good things tend to follow from strong worship participation. Therefore, keeping attuned to fluctuations in attendance can give leaders important clues. Most churches collect weekly attendance data and report it to the congregation. The most common practice is to report attendance for the previous week. Sometimes there will be a comparison with the same Sunday a year ago. Neither of these practices provides helpful information about trends and patterns. Read MoreDownload an Attendance Tracking Template |
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| The Right Question | |||||||||||||||
Someone who worked closely for many years with Sam Walton, the legendary founder of Wal-Mart, says that Walton was known to seek out a broad range of opinions and seemed genuinely interested in the ideas of others. Therefore, one could hear Walton asking this question routinely throughout each day: What do you think? |
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Editors: Lovett H. Weems, Jr. and Ann A. Michel Copyright © 2006 by the G. Douglass Lewis Center for Church Leadership. Leading Ideas material may be freely distributed with attribution (exclusive of material protected by separate copyright). |
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